February 09, 2010
 
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| How to Start Your Own Garage Schola |
| by Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker |
| 7/12/06 |
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At an international conference on liturgical music sponsored by the Vatican on December 5, 2005, Monsignor Valentino Miserachs Grau dropped a bomb. Being the head of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, and the leading voice for the Catholic Faith in all matters of music, his topic was not merely of academic interest, nor was it clouded in qualifications or hazy rhetoric. Instead, he used the occasion to make a passionate case for a change that will affect every cathedral, seminary, and parish in the Roman-rite world. His words were unmistakable, almost shocking, a clarion call for a radical change in the way we experience the liturgy.
Monsignor Grau began by demonstrating that the Church wants the faithful to sing Gregorian chant, citing a century of documents, most of them issued after Vatican II and one of them released in 2005 at the last Synod of Bishops. He quickly contrasted this with the current reality: "The almost outright ban on Latin and Gregorian chant seen over the past 40 years is incomprehensible, especially in the Latin countries. It is incomprehensible, and deplorable."
"We have undervalued the Christian people's ability to learn," he continued. "We have almost forced them to forget the Gregorian melodies that they knew, instead of expanding and deepening their knowledge, including through proper instruction on the meaning of the texts. And instead, we have stuffed them full of banalities."
"Without Gregorian chant," he said, "the Church is mutilated.... There cannot be Church music without Gregorian chant.... Gregorian chant must not remain in the preserve of academia, or the concert hall, or recordings; it must not be mummified like a museum exhibit, but must return as living song."
"It's time to break through the inertia, and the shining example must come from the cathedral churches, the major churches, the monasteries, the convents, the seminaries, and the houses of religious formation. And so the humble parishes, too, will end up being ‘contaminated' by the supreme beauty of the chant of the Church. And the persuasive power of Gregorian chant will reverberate, and will consolidate the people in the true sense of Catholicism."
No, You're Not Dreaming
In many ways, it was the speech that millions of Catholics the world over have prayed for since those strange days of the late 1960s and early 1970s when liturgy stopped sounding Catholic.
In effect, Monsignor Grau declared that the time for debate is over, and the time for action has arrived. A major rescue operation must begin immediately if we are to recover a most profound treasure of the Church: its musical heritage.
Before the age of electronic communication, such a speech might have been buried by anyone who didn't welcome the message. But today, thanks to the Internet, the speech immediately created a firestorm of controversy; blogs and forums filled up with every kind of response -- from joyous elation from those longing for change, to bitter resentment from people with a heavy investment in the status quo.
Many comments dealt with the reality that few people are prepared to lead in this new direction. Generations have been raised in the parish setting with no musical training, and so competence appears all but vanished. Hardly anyone knows the basic melodies. The Latin is forbidding; fewer still know how to read "square notes." And there is no money to hire professionals.
There is also the pastoral concern that any change could be destabilizing. One Web writer noted: "Changing the music in a church is always an emotional issue for the whole congregation…. In the church I was in previously that had chant, I knew people who left partly over frustration with the music."
Fair enough. It's risky to change the music to which people have become accustomed in liturgy. It calls for hard work, courage, and heavy involvement by laypeople and by every parish. As wonderful as a Vatican commission would be -- one that would assist every diocese and work to remind bishops and pastors of the need to support chant and truly sacred music -- there is only so much an administrative office can do.
Professionals can help, but far too few are properly trained in this tradition. Ultimately, and in most parishes, the chant is going to be sung by enthusiastic non-professionals, which -- if you've read this far in the article -- probably means you.
One suggestion from a commenter on the Web was made with humor, but speaks to a certain truth. He called for the founding of "garage scholas" that sing chant, adding: "Viva la revolución."
He is precisely right. The first step is not to march up to your pastor and demand that he do something to bring the sounds of Solesmes to your parish. A pastor cannot make it come into being as if by magic: The singers in the parish are not likely to have any experience with the chant -- the language confuses them and they're likely afraid that they'll mispronounce the words -- and accompanists don't even know where to begin.
Under the best (and least likely) conditions, the pastor will seek out singers to make the change in the music. More likely, the pastor has gotten used to the music as it is and feels no passion for changing it. But even in the latter case, the pastor isn't preventing the chant from being sung. If the conditions were right, he might well approve of a change. But in most parishes, the conditions are not there. Neither the singers nor the people are prepared for an overnight change by fiat.
If you really want chant in your parish -- and you should -- you have to take an active role, not in lobbying for it but in taking the initiative to bring it to life. The plan we map out below cannot be put into place in a month, or even a year. Your parish will not sound like the Bells of St. Mary's in one season. This is for the long term. Think in terms of two to five years, which is a tiny slice of time in the history of chant. |
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